The tropical storm to our east gave us thick, calm strato-cumulus clouds, cooler temps and a northerly breeze all day but it cleared @ sunset and when I wandered out for a look @ 10pm the sky was extremely transparent for summertime in Texas. So I set the XT10i tube in its bag in the garage and unzipped it to let it warm while I got the gear together. I'd made a list of mostly globular and a few open clusters last week in case I got a shot so I was ready.

M13 - notes: "stars all over core via avert, @100 stars via avert, Beautiful" Taking out the faint stars removed most haze around the big core but the ring NE, parallel rows SW, a line NW and other brighter features remained. 3.7

M20, observation of the night - notes: "M20 in center of Telrad, moon ON left edge of outer ring! very nice quad star w/o nebulosity" Still, it IS a very nice quad star. 4.7

Alberio was gorgeous as always and best with the 10mm. Jupiter was very fine with 1 moon hiding behind. Saturn has been beautiful lately and this was no exception with great detail and a whole range of color in both rings and disc. 10, 4.7, 3.7

The moon? Yeah, I looked before quitting the session. But what can I say... Light pollution by any other name is still LP. Old Luna did contribute interesting limits to many of the observations though.

With a nearly full moon rising under humid skies (83%), NELM ~3.5 and less then 30 miles from downtown Houston, I set up my 8" dob on my back deck and went after a few faint fuzzies. Seeing was very good...Saturn and Jupiter were amazing. My 12 year old daughter came out to help and, with a little guidance by yours truly, we were able to see:

M80 Faint but obvious. Couldn't quite resolve any stars.

M5 Very Obvious. Could resolve stars around the edges.

M22 Very obvious. Lots of resolved stars

M28 Not to difficult. Unresolved.

Alberio Easy, of course

Alcor-Mizar Ditto

Antares and companion Daughter saw the companion as greenish!

M4 Very difficult. I could see it but she could not.

Double-Double Nice easy split.

M57 No problem. Looked like the donut it is.

M11 Faint but not to difficult.

At this point we had to stop as the golf course, on which we reside, turned its sprinklers on and with a pretty steady south wind we were getting "rained" on! I covered up and will head back out shortly when Saturn is at meridian.

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I've done some 'moonie observing' over the years. You can see enough to make the set-up efforts worthwhile - if conditions are otherwise very good.

One night, needing to test some work done on my Obsession 20, I hauled it out on the lawn on a full moon night. Just for the 'fun of it' I watched the full moon rise over the ridgeline to the East. I was actually sitting in the grass, and bending down to look thru the eyepiece of a 20-inch F/5!!!

After doing some planets, and a few star clusters -- I remembered double stars! So I went thru 'the list' in my NGC-Max DSC unit. It was a night of very good seeing - rare in the Northeast - and I found that a 20-inch could split every double the DSC could provide!

Finally I turned to moon viewing using my Bino-viewers and a variable polarizer filter - to avoid blindness! The moon can be fun - even the full moon. As Sir Patrick Moore said rather late in his life: "Once a moon man - Always a moon man!"